Do You Remember Motown? Chapter 1
by Chillyche
Summary: The world changed forever on February 7th, 2009. For chanteuse Vanessa Keyes, it's just another gig.    This story takes place within the Macross Universe, but not actually during the Frontier timeline.
1. Chapter 1

She's heard it all before. _Great voice, hon. You're gonna be a star. You'll go places._ But, as of yet, she is still exactly where she's always been, in the dim, dingy, and unsettlingly sticky backroom of _Moonlight Sonada's. _Vanessa Keyes smiles, or at least manages a facsimile of the expression, shakes hands with... slash dodges kisses from tonight's sad assortment of club-goers. To understand the term _club-goer _in this context, one must first understand what is meant by _club _here.

_Moonlight Sonada's_ is run down. Not dive-bar-isn't-it-atmospheric-and-so-authentic run down, but recently-condemned-until-the-landlord-paid-off-the-appropriate-official run down. None the less, it's been a neighborhood staple for something like a billion years, judging by the build-up of indeterminate grime on every available surface. According to local legend, the place saw its heyday back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and to hear old Sonada himself tell it, any name in the annals of musical history has passed through, done a set, or done coke off of somebody else – equally famous – in the back room. The same back room, which, presently, is hosting one Vanessa Frances Keyes.

This is not Van's first rodeo, and despite her best – okay, half-hearted – efforts to the contrary, her weariness shows. She's been at _Sonada's _every night for the last six months, and tonight marks six months and one day. One day too long. This is a girl with _dreams_, people. With a voice that could rend the heavens and move angels to tears. The homeboys from her block half-joke that she's the Serpentor of Song: created from the DNA of the most soulful singers history has known. But she's still _here_, in a raggedy-ass back room, in a decrepit bar, in the middle of nowhere: Detroit, 2009.

"Not a bad haul," Banner says to her. Banner is named such, because of his hulking physique. The purple denim cutoffs came as an obvious nod to his pseudonym. When you've got this much mass, you can get away with shit like that. At the moment, Banner is also getting away with making a push broom flex almost to its breaking point as he leans on the thing.

"You're kidding, right?" Van doesn't stand on ceremony. "This was light for a Thursday... and Thursdays are..." she struggles, but dammit if the only word she can come with is, "light... as is. Really light."

"It'll pick up, Van. You'll go p..."

"Go places, I know, I'm sorry. It's just, _this_ place is dead, you know?" She counts her take again, then carefully folds it, and puts it in a well-worn envelope she tucks into her purse.

"Lot of history here."

"Rome too. Or ancient Egypt. Some places time just leaves behind, and I'm pretty sure we're there." In point of fact, Van's estimation isn't too far from the ostensible truth.

"Motown ain't dead yet. Maybe things'll pick up when..."

"That song's a decade old, Banners," Van says, though not without some compassion.

Detroit has seen a _lot_ in the last half century, and anyone still trying to eek out a living amongst the burned out tenements, shuttered and shattered factories, and crumbling facades has practiced the familiar refrain of "things'll up pick up when..." more than once. For a fleeting moment, almost ten years ago, spirits rose in Detroit, along with the promise of some good old fashioned manufacturing work and all the attendant boosts in economy. Not too long after the world greeted its first extraterrestrial visitor – a mile long spacecraft which plunged into a small island in the south Pacific – the UN announced plans to rebuild the thing. Hopeful assembly lines all over the globe began spinning their conveyors at the news. Even as Motown was passed by, outbid, and undercut by bigger and better players in the game, hope remained. On account of the war. After all, war has always been good for the American economy, why should this time be any different? The whys are too numerous and too mundane to list, but the whats were simple: Detroit didn't experience a resurgence. The renaissance never happened. And Detroit continued to, and continues to erode under the weight of nostalgia, unemployment, and unrealized dreams.

That's the context to Van's malaise, although her particular problem is far less geopolitical. "I'm tired of playing these things, is all," she sighs.

"Van," Banner says, letting off the broom for just long enough to let into Vanessa, "a guy came through here once, told me this: two or two hundred, I rock the same show."

Vanessa waits. Expects the _but_ or the _and_ or the turn of a phrase, the play of a word, something. But that's it. Banner has, improbably, returned to driving his broom across a floor which may be incapable of cleanliness.

Vanessa Keyes pulls her collar tight around her bare neck. She really ought to get a scarf, she muses as that notoriously cold night wind moves straight through her coat, her hoodie, her little black dress, her epidermis, her fascia, and into her bones. It's the kind of cold that defies description beyond the pure facts: Detroit. In February. Mostly it's a meteorological phenomenon, but it's entirely possible that at some level it's psychological. As grits her teeth against Jack Frost's icey assault, Van is dividing her attention between two or three lines of thought.

In no particular order, they are:

Get home in one piece.

Get the hell out of Detroit.

Banner's proverb.

In service to the first line of thought, Van is walking an accelerated pace. The "neighborhood" consists of, on the east side of the street, several blocks of vacant lots/demolished buildings which developers have abandoned for greener pastures, and on the west side of the street mostly gated warehouses with a few shuttered up bodegas and more than a few bars, some of which are depressingly still open even at this hour. The light is decidedly sodium vapor in color temperature, giving everything an ironically gilded look.

The second line of thought is the default internal monologue for Van. The thought pattern is as familiar to her as water is to a fish, or bullshit is to a politician. In other words, she swims in it. Even before Van could speak, she could sing. The words and meanings of those songs, unfortunately, are lost, known only to the pre-verbal mind of Vanessa herself. To their credit, her parents recognized their daughter's preternatural abilities and did all the right things to foster and develop her talent. After school vocal lessons, piano lessons, violin, guitar, dance, acting, more vocal lessons, choir, orchestra, if there had BEEN a band camp in downtown Detroit, then Van would certainly have had more than one "one time, at band camp..." stories. But what Van enjoyed the most, was tagging along behind her father to old – ancient, really – jazz clubs. Clarence Keyes played a mean stand-up bass, in his day, and despite the obvious quasi-criminal negligence of bringing a child into a place like _Moonlight Sonada's_, he was a pretty cool dad. At his funeral, Vanessa sang _Amazing Grace_. There wasn't a dry eye in an eight block radius. It was, aptly, amazing. Amidst the condolences, those paying their respects all found the time to tell Van that she was going places. That her voice could bring a giant to its knees. She was twelve at the time. Now she's nineteen. Got her own place now (though she spends at least a few days a week at her Grandma's to help out). She used to imagine she'd be touring all the glamorous spots in the world – New York, Paris, Madrid, Rio, Tokyo – now she still has those dreams, but they come later in the dream-narrative than _get the hell out of Detroit, do something of note._

Just to be clear, though, Van doesn't only sing to go somewhere. Remember, she grew up around all those jazz geniuses, pretentious bastards the lot of them. If she couldn't back it up with that voice of hers, she'd be an intolerable music snob. But she's not. She just _understands_ music. She _speaks _it. She can weave tapestries with it, paint pictures with it, build monuments. It _touches_ her, and really, at the core, she wants other people to feel that connection, to touch them, too. She wants to bypass the frontal lobes and connect right at your brain stem, your spinal column, your subconscious. This is the natural segue between her second and third lines of thought. Simply, Banner's proverb "two or two hundred, play the same show," is what separates mere entertainers from true artists. Or at least from starving artists. That's the rub. She _does_ love music and singing for people. She _had_ been giving every show, every crowd, everything she had. But somewhere in there, she started phoning it in. Make no mistake, Vanessa Keyes giving ten percent will still cause any man with even a shred of heart to fall madly, deeply in love, either with Van or with life itself. At least for the duration of a song. Still, there's something to it, something simple and ineffable. Something just... _true?_ She wonders. And with that, she has come to the conclusion of her first line of thought. She begins the ritual of disengaging the armada of deadbolts at her apartment. Home.


	2. Chapter 2

Vanessa Keyes is on fire. Banner could swear the girl is glowing on that stage, actually radiating visible energy. That's how on fire she is. At this moment, she is Bruce Lee leaving trails. She is Jordan sailing through the air, tongue extended. She is Michelangelo finding David within a block of granite. She is the nexus of art and science, the perfect balance of the math of music and the ineffable quality of soul. And she knows it. She knows it because the crowd knows it. She knows the crowd knows it because, well, they're going insane.

Time was, _Sonada's_ was like this every night. Or so goes the legend. Back before Detroit exhibited the first signs of the wasting disease known as outsourcing. Tonight, though, the air is _electric. _It started around eleven, when a couple of young cats stumbled into the bar, laughing and shouting, fresh from some illicit caper or another. Vanessa had just stepped onto stage then, and was about to give the newcomers some attitude. She wasn't sure what had stopped her, but instead she just cleared her throat, and made eye contact with each of the kids. Their jokes and braggadocio just sorta potted down from max to mute as she fixed each of them with a stare that somehow said, simply, _listen to my song._

The bassist began it all, one short note, so low you couldn't be sure whether you actually _heard_ anything or just felt it, gravelly, in the pit of your stomach. Then again. And again. And again. Regular as clockwork. He shifted pitch, ever so slightly. Four more low notes. The keys came in next, just as low, not quite distorted, but crackling, like an overplayed vinyl 7 inch. At the end of the measure, the drummer let her sticks rap across the snare, an almost military drum roll, except for down beat tempo of the whole thing, and muted quality of the drum.

Never taking her eyes off of the crowd, Vanessa opened up.

"I..." she breathed, "been all around the world... just to wind up right back here, exactly where I started from..." And she had them. "Why? Just another little girl... with dreams of fairy wings but when exactly did I part from them?" Cue the strings.

Since that show opener enough people have crammed into _Sonada's _to take the place from likely fire hazard status to most assuredly fire hazard status. This regardless of the highly dubious wiring supplying the surprisingly adequate sound system with power. Bodies sway and pulse as Vanessa's vocals caress the crowd. At once, old-timers and young bucks (_Sonada's _is famously lax when it comes to checking IDs) feel a sense of nostalgia for something lost and yet also an anticipation for something yet to come. Time and space are laid bare here, the entire notion of "linear" seems laughably misguided as Vanessa effortlessly encompasses the gamut of human emotion, experience, loss and triumph. The crowd is transfixed. The band sweats over their instruments. Vanessa coos the last note of an upbeat cut, her eyes closed now, satisfied that she has connected. The spell persists for a moment.

"We love you, Vanessa!" somebody cries. And the crowd explodes into applause, cheering, whistles. Stadiums don't make this much noise. _Sonada's_ is in danger of being blown apart by the sheer excitement of the audience.

"I love you too, Detroit," Vanessa says. And the funny thing is, in this moment, it's true.

Vanessa takes a long swing of water, then holds the cool bottle to her forehead. The door opens. Banner. Behind him, the club-goers are noisily going about their business, waiting for the next set. A DJ spins something that on any other night, might be a guaranteed banger, but tonight feels merely like the suggestion of music.

"So..." he says.

"So," Vanessa matches.

"Not a bad haul, so far." The smile stretches from Banner's left ear to his right, no small task given the overall width of the man.

"Two or two-hundred... I figured I'd rock the same show," Vanessa smiles. It feels good. She can't even think of the last time she really let loose like this. She can't think why hasn't been doing this all along. Her skin is tingling. "Isn't that what you said?"

"Wasn't me, originally. I was just passing it along, I guess."

"Well," she says, sauntering over to the guy, "thanks." Vanessa stretches, almost to the limits of human ability, balancing on the tip of her toes, and gives Banner a peck on the cheek. She slides past him, out of the back room, and back to the stage.


	3. Chapter 3

If anybody was watching the one crummy television in the joint, they'd know that history was in the making today. Halfway around the world. But nobody is watching that history. They're watching history in the making right here, in Detroit, in _Moonlight Sonada's_, on that crowded little stage. They're already planning on having the conversations that begin "where were you when you first heard Vanessa Keyes?" or "I was _there._" It can't be overstated enough, Vanessa's performance is changing peoples' lives. Men who shuffled into the bar already stinking of booze, eyes sunken, spirits sunken lower are more animated than kids hopped up on sugary breakfast cereals. Youth who, if less apathetic about their lot in life might have been bothered to join a gang are suddenly alive, sensing the possibility around them, eager to meet the challenges of the next day. Vanessa's peers, who might have been looking forward to a full time employment consisting of struggling to hold an extended family together on a single low-wage income are finding reserves of self-respect hitherto unknown.

Cameras flash, and handheld devices record video. Everybody wants to own this moment forever, because in this moment, everybody feels alive. Feel as alive as Vanessa up there, letting it all out. Motown is back. Maybe it's because of this that the crowd doesn't notice the flash outside, behind their backs. But Vanessa does. The entire sky lights up for a moment, like lightening reflecting off of a snowy field back at a blanket of clouds. Except it takes a little longer than lightening. And there are no fields (outside of fields of debris) anywhere remotely near Detroit. A second later, there another, duller flash, this time orange, like a billion sodium-vapor street lamps simultaneously took to the sky. This is when Vanessa falters.

"I'm sorry," she interrupts her own song, "but did anybody else see that?"

And then the lights go out.

Somebody hoots. There's a giggle. Somebody else shouts "Go, Vanessa!"

She can't hear the hum of the monitors, of the amps. The power is completely out. What's more, she can't see the street lights outside. The only light is the spill from moon, which doesn't extend terribly deep into the bar. It's a dive, after all. What's weird is that nobody is using their phone as a light. What's weirder still is that it's not for lack of trying. The phones are just dead. Dead as the amps, the television, the lights. Muttering from the floor reaches her. The spell is broken. People are starting to jostle around, push and shove, voice complaints.

Vanessa makes an educated guess, and steps off the low stage into the audience. She's a little off the mark, and comes down hard on her ankle. _Crap._ She squeezes through the mass of bodies, politely excusing herself. She can feel the press behind her, as the crowd begins to follow. She just barely navigates out of the place, stepping out into the cold. Jack Frost welcomes her outside with a frosty blast that turns the perspiration of performance into a thin sheen of ice. She folds her bare arms across her chest in a largely symbolic gesture against the elements, and takes it in.

Somebody turned Detroit off. As far as she can see, there are no lights. No street lamps, no traffic lights, no windows. Granted, it's the wee hours of the morning, but downtown has stubbornly left its lights on since the American economy was something to be proud of. Detroit is completely shut down. And yet, everything is still bathed in that golden glow of the street lamps... except it's no longer the lamps providing the light. Vanessa is suddenly compelled to look to the sky, and when she does, she can't take her eyes off of it.

It's beautiful. A hundred-thousand shooting stars burn across the otherwise inky black dome of sky. All different sizes, moving at varying speeds, radiating outward from some point towards the horizon. Their fiery tails casting soft amber light across the world. Somebody bumps her from behind. The club has emptied out onto the street, and people have begun to cotton on to the light show.

"Look!" somebody says, completely unnecessarily. Vanessa's eyes trace a particularly large, slow moving meteor across the sky, past the city... into the earth. She see's the flash, but doesn't register the meaning until seconds later, when an ear-splitting boom knocks her right off her feet.

It is this moment when it dawns on just about everybody from _Sonada's_ that something is not right. The power outage and the meteor shower suddenly seem inexorably linked. The anticipation of things to come has suddenly crystallized into an expression more along the lines of dread, or for a few, pure, mad terror. Those are the few that immediately make a break for it, as though there were somewhere to run when the sky is falling. Around her, chaos takes hold. Screaming, fighting, crying. Some run back inside (and some of those immediately grab liquor). Others fall to their knees, remembering long-forgotten prayers to long-abandoned deities.

Time has slowed to a crawl for Vanessa. Up and down the street, she sees people spilling out of old buildings, watching the sky, breaking down. Confusion. It feels and sounds a thousand miles away, but she's right in the thick of it. She gets it into her head that she should move. She takes a step to the side, just moments before a man flies past her, lands on the pavement, clutching at his chest. Red. Blood. There's a knife wedged into his ribcage, all the way to the handle. The man on the pavement coughs, and lies down. Behind her, a couple of her until-very-recently-fans are locked in a fighter's embrace, trying to land body blows on each other. She steps back, sees Banner move through the throng of people, push the two combatants apart. One of them she recognizes, one of the kids from the start of the show. The other, unfamiliar to her, loses his footing and lands hard on his tailbone. He shouts something profane, and reaches behind his back. Again, Vanessa feels the urge to step away. She does, but her bad ankle buckles, and she falls, lands on the man with the knife in his chest. He isn't breathing. There's a strange waxy sheen to him.

BANG. The kid on the ground waves a handgun for about a second before Banner and her father – no, not her father, but an older gentleman – have the kid pinned against the concrete, weapon pried from his hand. Somebody is shrieking now. From her vantage point, she can see a woman deeper in the crowd crumpled on the sidewalk, dark liquid pooling around her head. She isn't the one screaming.

The ground shakes, heaves if that's possible. The sound is so loud that Vanessa tries to stick her fingers in her ears, even though there are already earplugs in there. A hot gust of wind blows dust in her eyes, mouth, nose. She can't understand why it's hot. It was well below freezing earlier. She cranes her neck around, sees downtown. It's burning. Detroit is burning.


	4. Chapter 4

Motown is on fire. Plumes of dense smoke and debris rise from most every neighborhood, bending oddly horizontal as they drift further from their epicenters. That's when the cold winter air begins winning the struggle against the heat of the fires. Heavier debris, flakes of char the size of postage stamps begins precipitating from the clouds, an eerie snowfall on a wasted city.

Banner is kneeling on the chest of some young punk who couldn't keep it in his pants. He's pinned the kid's arms to pavement with his own powerful hands, and an older man, a club regular is busy wresting a gun from the kid's grip. He's yelling something. Or somebody else is, Banner can't be sure, because he may be deaf. He wasn't deaf before, to the best of his knowledge, so this is surprising to him. His head feels cloudy, heavy. Something is nagging at the back of his mind, something he needs to remember.

"VAN!" He shouts. He's not sure if he actually hears himself saying it, or if he just feels the vibration inside his own head. Either way, he notes, he mustn't be deaf, because his eardrums are working. "Van!" And suddenly, with a wave of nausea, sound returns. Screaming. Shouting. Panic. Terror. And a ringing like you wouldn't believe. That's the treble. The bass is a scattered dull thudding, billions of times more intense than any kick drum ever devised by humanity.

Vanessa pulls a foam earplug from one of her ears. And everything rushes in on her. All of her senses explode. She feels the frozen concrete against her palms, gritty even through the numbness of cold. Her knees feel sticky and hot, they sting. She must have skinned them when she fell. She is aware, suddenly, awfully, that the man who broke her fall is dead. His blood has soaked through her dress, she can feel it cooling against her stomach. She scrambles off of him. A boot crushes her hand momentarily, as the boot owner stumbles about. She screams.

"VAN!"

Somebody is calling her name. It's Banner. "BANNER!" She cries. Or at least she wants to. Instead, her voice is a soft whimper. She cradles her crushed hand tight to her chest, as it throbs. She works the fingers, proving to herself, however improbably that nothing is broken.

"Get _off_ me, man!" The kid screams in Banner's face. Banner slugs him in the jaw, knocking his head back into the pavement with a crack. The kid's eyes roll back into his sockets as he retires for the evening.

"Shit." Banner shakes his hand, the knuckles raw from the punch. "Shit. Fuck."

"BANNER!" Vanessa manages to project this time, her voice cutting through the pandemonium. In a heartbeat, Banner is lifting her off the ground. His eyes rest on the dark stain across her dress. "Are you hurt?"

"Somebody stepped on my hand," she says, showing him the already purple limb. "With a boot," she adds, not entirely sure why, but feeling it's somehow important.

"You're covered in blood!"

"It's not mine," she says, shuddering, then adds, "It's fucking _freezing_."

"It's February."

"Vanessa." She turns. It's the man she mistook for her father earlier, but she'll be damned if she can place him now. Older, somewhere in his 50s or 60s, close cropped hair, cap, dark skin. Could have been anybody, really. "Daryl. Price. I used to play with Clarence."

"Yeah," she says. She doesn't know what else to say. Fire and brimstone is raining down from above, there are at least two dead bodies within spitting distance, and this guy is introducing himself like any other gentleman. _Hi, I knew your father, what's that? The world is ending?_

"You got a hell of a voice on you," he says. She can't help it, but she laughs. They stand there for a moment, Daryl, Banner, and Van. What else can you do? Daryl shrugs off his coat, and offers it to her, "You look cold."

She takes it from him, awkwardly sliding it on, careful not to graze her aching hand. "It's February."

"What _was_ that?" Banner asks after what he gauges is an appropriate wait. When in doubt, assume somebody else has an answer, no matter how unlikely that may seem. Vanessa frowns, brushes a flake of ash off her face with her good hand. It leaves a black smear.

"Seriously, Banners?" Vanessa snorts. He shrugs. She notes the black char on her hand. "Ugh, what _is_ this stuff?"

"Ash," Daryl says.

"What?" Vanessa asks, wiping the smear onto his borrowed coat.

"It's ash. Debris from the fires." He's remarkably nonplussed, in Vanessa's opinion. "This shit just keeps happening," he shakes his head.

Vanessa can't recall the last time a meteor shower rained destructive fire on an American major metropolitan center, but she nods anyway. Daryl Price is old enough, come to think of it, to have witnessed Detroit burning last time around. So what if those fires had been terrestrial in nature. She wonders what it is about this place that just can't seem to catch a break. The three of them turn their gaze back to the sky.

And what they see takes Van's breath away.

That shooting star just changed direction. And that one. And that one. In fact, all of the trails are now zig-zagging through the sky, impossibly changing vectors, arcing this way and that, a few towards them. "You saw that?" She asks.

"Shit," Banner breathes, barely a whisper.

"What?"

"Thought maybe I was losing it," he shakes his head, "Kinda woulda more easy to accept."

"What kind of shooting star _changes direction_?" Van demands, the answer already pressing in on her from all around. Beside her, Daryl is lost, his attention on the burning skyline. Banner's jaw is set tight, his gaze fixed on the sky. Her bruised hand is throbbing with her heart beat, every pulse a wave of pain. She looks around her. Everybody is as lost as she is. Shock has set in. She knows the answer. She just didn't want to be the one to say it. Tough. "They're not shooting stars," she says quietly.


	5. Chapter 5

A point of light, not dissimilar from an airplane streaks through the Detroit night sky. Wholly dissimilar from an airplane, it leaves a slight purple-white trail of glowing exhaust, and can – and does – turn on a dime. It is not alone. It is amongst countless similar pinpoints criss-crossing the night. It is amongst an alarming number of those approaching Detroit.

Vanessa Keyes has just very recently come to the conclusion that these in-bound phenomena are not naturally occurring, and thus – and this is the bit which takes some work – are manufactured. Motown knows manufacturing, to be sure. Many here now know manufacturing only by its conspicuous absence from the local economy, but the general concept is not only familiar, but part of the landscape and culture. Motown certainly didn't manufacture these darting, falling stars. Nobody on Earth did.

"We gotta find shelter!" Somebody offers. The street is lined with stunned individuals, most having until a few minutes ago been holed up inside some bar, tavern, pub, dive, or other establishment known for still operating at three in the morning. Despite the clientele, the atmosphere is decidedly sober. The bitter-cold night air and the apparent coming of Armageddon have a tendency to do that to people.

"Where?" Daryl sighs, "where you gon' hide from this?" He gestures across the burning cityscape with a hand, swatting a few settling flakes of ash in the process. "In the basement? Underground?" There are a few hopeful murmurs. "No light? No power? Good luck. Me? I'm not going underground. Never been forced to hide before, I intend to see this through." Vanessa isn't sure what he means, nor is she sure she likes it. The guy has a commanding presence, a gentle, but authoritative tone, but he's of the old guard. Vanessa, on the other hand, was ready to blow this popsicle stand even before the heavens opened up and rained flaming disaster. Well, up until tonight. That performance had changed something deep inside of her. Something had connected her to the people, the place, the history.

"Do you, pops," a voice in the crowd says. A young man turns and begins walking down the street. A few others follow.

"We should get supplies," and that raises some voices in support. More leave.

"Now what?" The kid from the start of the show asks. Vanessa isn't sure why he's looking towards her. _Why are you looking at me?_ And Vanessa realizes just what kind of a sorry picture has shaped up tonight. A few minutes ago, she was at the center of the world. All eyes on her. She touched all these people, made them feel things they had forgotten they could feel, things they might have never known they could feel. Now, she's standing in the street of a ruined city, breathing air so cold her lungs hurt. Her mocha face is smeared with dark ash. Her blue dress is soaked through with another man's blood, stiff from cold, and she's wearing an old-style overcoat about four sizes too large for her. Her left hand is curled into painful claw, purple around the bruised knuckles. No doubt her hair is a lost cause. And for some reason, this kid is still looking to her. She wonders if there's some sort of sick form of imprinting going on, like, if the first thing people see when a new world is born somehow becomes their mother. She laughs a little.

"What?" The kid's, temper flares, feeling like somehow he's been made a fool.

"What's your name?" Vanessa asks.

"What?"

"Your name."

"Ty."

"I don't know, Ty," Vanessa sighs. She looks around, sees a group of people towards the end of the block walking, but without much purpose. "I don't think anybody does. But it's cold as a motherfucker out here..."

And then thunder rips at their ears, and a moment later, they're caught in a downpour.

"Ow!" Vanessa's forehead stings, then feels hot. She puts her hand to it. Blood. This time hers. Something is clattering all around them. Not rain, sounds like hail. It's dirt. Gravel. Bits of asphalt. She ducks into a ball, covering her head. Most of the crowd still gathered round the entrance of _Moonlight Sonada's _is doing likewise. Banner moves to shield her further, which she has to admit, is a mighty fine gesture.

At the end of the block, several buildings have ceased to exist. There's screaming. No sign of the group that headed off that way. Something's burning. Acrid smoke that much sharper in the cold air.

"That's ordnance," Banner says into her ear. Vanessa has no real idea what that means. But it sounds important, and from his tone, she's guessing it's not good.

It's at that moment that Vanessa Keyes sees the craziest thing any human being has ever seen. It's some forty-five feet tall, made of metal, and _bounding_ down the street. Like an enormous, bulbous up-ended SUV on two long legs, painted in tones of green. It's gone before she has a chance to study it, but it sure as hell looked like it was bristling with the kind of large caliber weaponry you'd find on, say, a battleship.

"Get inside!" Banner is yelling. Vanessa doesn't wait, she takes off, twisted ankle registering its complaint to deaf ears. Vanessa is back inside _Sonada's_, almost to the stage before she slows down. The place is filling back up. _Still a decent crowd,_ Vanessa finds herself thinking, the ultimate in bittersweet observations. Ty pulls Daryl through the door as a few others stream in. Daryl pushes away from Ty, and dusts himself off, looks like he's muttering. Ty stares wide-eyed for a moment, then throws his head back and laughs. Van can't hear the exchange, can only see it in silhouette playing out in front of the window, soft orange and red light spilling only a few feet into the bar. Daryl stands up stiff, proper, like a gentlemen ought to, then he lets out a deep belly laugh too. Ty punches the older man in the shoulder, and they give each other dap, pounding fists, before moving deeper into the bar.

"That was... ordnance?" Van asks Banner.

"That was a fucking _UFO_," Banner responds.

"It wasn't flying," Vanessa says, matter of fact.

"What?"

"Unidentified _flying_ object. UFO. That thing wasn't flying," Van smiles. Banner's face is blank for a moment, inscrutable in the darkness. Then he screws up his mouth, and snorts with laughter.

"You always was stuck on words, Van," he laughs, "Semantics."

"Vocals."

And there's a terrible crunching sound: timbers splintering, bricks cracking, glass shattering. Vanessa chokes on the chalky dust rolling through _Sonada's._ Her eyes sting. Her mouth is full of powder, she's spitting. Gagging. There's wailing, groaning, shrieks. Heavy metal clanging against stone. People are pushing her, and she stumbles backwards, against the edge of the stage, lands on her ass. She flails about, tangling her arms in cords, pulling a mic stand down. It glances off her shoulder, and she swears.

Tears flush the last of the detritus from her eyes, and she squints, looking around, blurry shapes everywhere. The front of _Sonada's _is a tangled mess of smoking rubble. No longer a barrier to the Detroit winter, the cold rushes in and takes no prisoners. Bricks surrounding the gaping hole loosen and fall into the pile, clanging off of something metallic. Something metallic and _alien_.

As the survivors stagger to their feet, stunned, Vanessa watches, somewhere between burning curiosity and insane horror, as something shifts within the rubble. A pile of crushed stone rises into the air a few feet before spilling to the side. A thick plate of metal armor, green – but not army green – is pivoting from within the wreckage. Vanessa's teary eyes slide along the debris, and she realizes one of those _things_ is _here_ inside of the bar. And it's opening. She scrambles back on her hands, pain be damned, till she's got her back to the wall. Her eyes dart around, but there's no sign of Banner, or Daryl, or Ty. Everybody is blanketed with a layer of pulverized concrete, insulation, and sawdust, though, so admittedly, she's not sure she _can't_ see them. Banner, at least should be recognizable by his sheer mass.

"What's going on?" A woman asks, dazed.

"Ssshhhh!" Vanessa hisses. "Get down!"

The metal plate stops, clangs into position. There's a hissing noise, and a great puff of steam or gas ejects from the object, swirling the settling dust, disturbing the rain of ash on the street. For a moment nothing happens. Vanessa is so still she thinks she may have actually willed her heart to stop beating. Then something slowly emerges from the armored shell, displacing the rubble.

First contact. Methodically pulling itself from the battered metal pod with thick, sturdy arms, a humanoid figure appears. Except that this particular humanoid is a giant. It stands, and suddenly Vanessa thinks Banner doesn't seem so large any more. The monster is easily over twenty-five feet tall.

It reaches out to steady itself on the floor above, but the building's structural integrity was dubious even in the best of times. The giant's hand crunches a fistful of hardwood floor, studs, insulation, and plaster from the second floor, and it goes down onto its knees (assuming alien giants have knees). The impact shakes more debris loose from above, and sends shivers up the walls of _Sonada's._ Building materials groan, like the hulls of old galleons in pirate flicks, and Vanessa stares wide-eyed at the giant. It appears to be wearing some sort of padded suit – a space suit, Vanessa assumes – and it's fidgeting with what must be its helmet.

There are a couple of loud pops, too loud, and she sees a flash from behind the bar. Somebody is firing on the giant with a handgun, perhaps the only time weapons at a night club have ever made sense to her. The giant either doesn't notice, or doesn't care, and continues working helmet. Something snaps, and the thing pulls the helmet off, and tosses it over an enormous shoulder, into the street.

Vanessa's not sure when she started holding her breath, but now she gasps, audibly. The giant takes its own breath, then looks right at her. With two _eyes_. Two green, very human eyes beneath dark brows. On an improbably human, and almost handsome face.

"A man..." Vanessa whispers, to no one in particular. She swears the giant's face screws up in a moment of confusion.

"Micraan...? Te... meltran?" His voice booms through the club, echoing, maybe in his own throat. Vanessa can't help but think this giant is almost as surprised at seeing her as she is to see him. He doesn't move for a moment. More gunshots. Three or four pops in, the giant slaps at his face, as though bitten by a small insect. He frowns. "Udana?" There are a few more muzzle flashes from a dark recess of the room. The giant's arm shoots out at a dazzling speed and pulverizes his assailant against the wall with a sickeningly wet crunch. Retracting his hand, he regards the slick stain of black-red blood and viscera with something between curiosity and mild distaste. At least, that's what it looks like to a human eye. All of which are on the alien visitor at this moment. He turns his attention back to Vanessa, and narrows his eyes. He tries to stand, but clobbers his head on the ceiling, sending more dust raining down on the scattered survivors. There's a mad rush to get to the back of the bar. People push, scream, kick, crawl.

The monster rubs the back of his enormous head, then slaps his hand down to floor, and pulls himself forward. He crawls, army style, or perhaps, like a titan's child squeezing under a table or a bed to play with his secret toys. Like a nightmare. He pulls himself closer and closer to the stage. Vanessa can't get any further back, now. She begins inching her way up the wall, back to her feet. She feels a presence beside her; it's Banner. He's holding a metal pipe, who knows from where. He edges in front of her, his grip readjusting on the makeshift weapon.

"Stay behind me," he says, under his breath.

The giant's face is now mere feet away, practically at the end of the stage, skin a dull green-gray. He stops when he sees Banner. Vanessa thinks the thing looks terrified.

"Meltran te Zentran?" It breathes, barely audible, but the bass still carries through the room. Hot breath blasts Vanessa and Banner. It's disturbingly intimate. The giant reaches his blood-covered hand towards them. Banner's grip tightens on the pipe, his stance widens, feet biting into the stage. Vanessa imagines the biggest man she's ever known pancaked against a wall, broken, and acts without thinking.

Van touches Banner's arm, and he stops, lets the pipe drop and roll across the stage. He can't say he knows why. She limps in front of him, ankle screaming at her, putting herself between the colossal alien and the rest of the survivors. She swallows hard. The giant hesitates. Still clutching the injured hand to her chest, Vanessa lifts her good arm into the air, and closes her eyes. And she let's go one powerful, resonant, note.

"It feels like I've been waiting..." she sings, "since the daaawwwn of my days... but you never came any closer, no, you never came any closer..." as her voice fills the space, spills out into the cold street, she reaches her hand outward. It's near enough to the giant's face that she can feel the heat radiating off of his body. "All those hours I've been pacing... never chaaaaannging my ways... but you never did come over, no, no, you never came over..."

The giant's eyes go wide, literally the size of saucers, or better yet serving dishes. He exclaims something incomprehensible to human ears, and flails his arms about, sending bar stools and amplifiers careening around. He presses his futon-sized palms to the side of his head and shuts his eyes tight. Vanessa doesn't see this, of course, because her eyes are still closed, her hand still reaching outward, her voice reaching inward. That voice, rich and sweet as honey never falters, even as she flinches at the clattering furniture and sound gear.

"And I can't, fathom, the patterns, the distance, the instants, we missed, for instance: a kiss..." Van continues. The giant has opened one eye, just a bit, a sliver of beach-ball sized optics visible beneath the heavy lid and furrowed brow. "And I won't, consider, the bittersweet notion, that hope's gone away, I'm hoping you'll staaaayyy..." And those massive hands slowly, carefully uncover the giant's ears. He winces at first, then those enormous green eyes focus on Vanessa.

She can feel his stare through her own closed eyelids. It's unnerving to be so utterly seen, by eyes bigger than her own head. Deciding to balance the situation – however balanced a battered and bruised amateur singer staring down giant green man from outer space can be – Van's eyes flick open, and she meets the giant's gaze. Time stands still. It's like she's been looking into those massive alien eyes since the beginning of time. She doesn't consciously know it, or attempt to articulate it, but she understands, this behemoth, this alien invader, this _man_ as an equal, a fellow traveler through the cosmos. She understands his strength and weakness now, his past and dreams. They are connected through this intangible thing called song, _her_ song. And she loves him. It isn't a romantic love, or a physical love, but something else entirely. Something that connects her to this stranger in the most profound sense of the word. Something that connects her to herself even, to everyone and everything. _Song_. She barely notices, but she's made her way through a chorus, another verse, and the bridge already, while transfixed in this moment. Vanessa Keyes beams. Tonight she not only touched Detroit with her song, but she touched the stars.

Her outstretched hand seeks the giant's cheek, finds its mark. Her light brown hand – until this evening well manicured, now smeared with ash and blood, palm raw from taking a few spills in the street – there against this giant's pale green cheek. His skin is warm, smoother than she expected. Less like an elephant, and more like a teenaged human, despite the proportions. The giant starts, his pupils sliding to the corner of his eyes, as he tries to size up this touch. Vanessa feels a tear roll down her left cheek, then another down her right, cleaning a trail through the soot dusted there. Her eyes sting, welling with tears as she moves through another chorus, the giant's attention moving back to her and her song.

His left hand – the clean one – moves slowly through the wreckage of the room, palm resting on the edge of the low stage. He extends his index finger, roughly a foot in length, thicker than Van's forearm. The knuckles are rough, calloused as though worn from a fist fight with a Bradley Tank. The nail is ragged, frayed at the edges. The giant doesn't take his eyes from Vanessa's for a second, the tip of his finger moves, almost imperceptibly, and Vanessa sways. She feels his heartbeat, pulsing through the finger that ever so slightly brushes her face. She can't help it,

"Welcome to Motown," she says.


	6. Author's Notes SPOILERS

Thanks for taking the time to read my first fan fic. I'm assuming you've finished, or else this section will be filled with SPOILERS and references to the preceding chapters.

Though it's categorized here as a Macross Frontier story, it's really just a Macross story, taking place in that world, but almost 50 years before the events of Frontier. It could perhaps more accurately be called a Superdimension Fortress: Macross story, though only due to the timeline.

There are a few clues and easter eggs scattered throughout the story that Macross fans may pick up on.

The first, and least relevant easter egg is the protagonist's name: Vanessa Frances Keyes. The Keyes is an homage to singer Alicia Keys, who provided some of the inspiration for the character, whereas the initials VF are fairly obvious. There are no Valkyries in the story, but I maintain that it isn't much of a Macross story without at least one VF.

The next is a major clue about what is about to happen. In the first chapter, in addition to the location: Detroit, I also make sure it is known that it is February, 2009. It's also a Thursday night. There were four Thursdays in February of 2009, and by the second Thursday, things on Earth were drastically different. A quick deduction places the date, then, at Thursday, February 5th, 2009. This means we're very close to the 2009/02/07 start date for Space War 1. Closer still, if we consider that South Ataria Island is likely at GMT+9, or 14 hours ahead of Detroit, in February. This is the biggest clue as to what is about to happen.

The other major clue, also in the first chapter is the following passage:

_At his funeral, Vanessa sang Amazing Grace. There wasn't a dry eye in an eight block radius. It was, aptly, amazing. Amidst the condolences, those paying their respects all found the time to tell Van that she was going places. That her voice could bring a giant to its knees._

Upon finishing the story, it's clear that it's not just a figure of speech, but foreshadowing. Indeed, before I had even considered the full story, the characters, or the setting, I had wanted to do a story of an errant Zentran being trapped with a soul singer, somewhere, and the bond they form in spite of the cultural differences. It took me a while to figure out the exact setting, because I kept being stymied by the idea that my singer was in the South Ataria Island shelters, the culture shock discovery would have changed the outcome of the entire run of SDF:M. So I decided to set it elsewhere. Far away from the SDF-1 and any of the action of the show. I had considered setting it in Canada, and allowing the SDF-1's barrier overload to conveniently erase all record of the story, but instead I opted for Detroit.

Detroit provided a couple of interesting elements. First, it's long musical tradition. At first this was just a lucky coincidence, until I embraced it, and wove that history into the fabric of the story. Second, the post-industrial economy. In our real world 2011, Detroit is something of a fractured shell of its former glory. I didn't have to stretch too far into sci-fi to depict Detroit as... well, a fractured shell of its former glory. The idea that Detroit missed out on the last big manufacturing jobs of old Earth – the SDF-1 refit and the variable fighter and destroid contracts was intriguing to me. The last hope of this once booming city, washed away, leaving nothing but ghosts and dreams. Finally, a town so utterly marginalized could have any fate I could imagine befall it. And not only that, but Detroit had been burnt down in the past. More than once. And somehow had risen again each time, to become symbols of American strength: first with the auto industry, and then with music. It was perfect.

Some people have wondered what exactly DOES happen to Detroit in this story. The first two flashes Vanessa witnesses – the white flash and then the orange flash – happen pretty late at night, so, really Saturday morning. Which is Saturday afternoon on South Ataria (which several sources have placed sort of near Iwo Jima). That means the SDF-1 will be firing the Macross Cannon at some Zentraedi scout ships in Earth orbit. The white flash is the Macross Cannon, and the orange are the ships exploding. The imagery in SDF:M shows the Macross Cannon shot traveling quite a distance before tagging those ships. I imagined that somewhere of on the horizon, the two things exploded, and as their wreckage fell into the atmosphere, it created a meteor shower all over. The rain of fire is all wreckage. Unfortunately, at some point, a reactor explodes, just into our atmosphere enough to generate a large EMP blast that knocks out Detroit's decaying power grid and (despite my science being slightly suspect) kills all the electronics in the house.

So what's the deal with the invading Zentraedi? Well, my idea was that some Reguld units may have escaped, or even been outside of the ship during the initial strike. Lacking a command structure after the destruction of their carrier, they touched down where-ever they could. Some of them in Detroit. It's less an invasion, and more shipwrecked Zentraedi doing what they do best at this point in their culture: fighting. I included some very basic Zentraedi language. Anybody that's watched DYRL or Frontier or Mac7 will recognize the words, since they're some of the most common in the franchise. But, to translate, the first line is, "Miclone [human-sized being]... and... Meltran [female]?" The Zentran is surprised to have found female miclones on this planet, not knowing what to expect. He later sees Banner and Vanessa next to each other and exclaims, "Meltran _and_ Zentran?" or simply "Woman _and_ Man?" Which is an inversion of a line from DYRL, when an invading Zentran sees Kaifun and Minmay together. The idea, of course, of men and women together is confounding and highly disturbing to uncultured Zentraedi.

People might wonder, what does Vanessa Keyes sound like? What does her set in the second chapter sound like? Well, Vanessa is pretty original, but I can still give you something to compare her to. Vanessa looks and sings like a young Alicia Keys (her namesake), soulful and clear. I had considered giving her a huskier voice with a little more rasp in it, but I decided to go another route. Her band, though, posed something of a challenge. Was it going to sound more like The Dap Kings? Or something a little more Hip Hop and modern? In the end, I went for something else entirely. The song that she plays in the middle of chapter 2 is most influenced by Portishead's "Wandering Star" off of the Dummy album. The haunting, gritty, sounds of mid 90s trip hop captured for me this decaying cityscape of post unification wars Detroit. The subtle electronic tones helped to position the music as part of a sci-fi universe, but the gritty, popping analogue nature helped to make it feel authentic and raw, underground, undiscovered. Finally, just for a little cartoonishly sci-fi soul, I listened to Janelle Monae's "Cold War" a few times. Not that the song is particularly cartoonish, but Janelle is a character, kind of out there, and I liked that theatricality. Vanessa's final song is probably inspired on some level that.

Ultimately, it was a fun story to write. I wrote it without an editor, and I knew even at the time that I might be making some strange choices here and there. Well, that's what happens when you don't have an editor, and that's really all there is to it. I may go back and revise and refine this at some point, but for now I'm happy to have people read it, raw and unadulterated.

Thanks for checking out my story. Please feel free to message to me or comment on the story if you've got something on your mind. Until then, See you next deculture!

-Che


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